Posted
by
timothy
on Thursday December 29, 2011 @10:30AM
from the happy-christmas dept.

New submitter Titus Andronicus writes "The South Pole experienced its highest-ever recorded temperature of -12.3C (+9.9F) on December 25, 2011, according to preliminary reporting from the Antarctic Meteorological Research Center at the University of Wisconsin."

In a climate crisis situation, anything that appears to support your idea that you're in a climate crisis is valid data. Anything that does not is pooh-pooh'ed away! Even if it's working off the same principle!

First, it's mid summer there. Second, there is no mention of the previous record so we have nothing to compare this "record" to. I have a friend who works there every year and his comments, from camp, last month was that they were battling storms and cold and hadn't been able to get too much work done. Finally, we have only been keeping track of temperatures there since 1956 so it's hardly worth getting into a tizzy over 60 years worth of record data.

What's hilarious is how these people shriek and cry about how the earth has always experienced climate change, pointing to the research of climatologists to prove this, but then when those same climatologists say there is evidence that this warming trend is caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, suddenly they can't be trusted.

It's simple- you have a group of people who say that they've done the science and have the answers. That group then says that noone should ever challenge their science or examine it (the science is settled). And that the only people who can perform the science are people who already agree with the conclusions and who are close friends to the current researchers - and if you come to any other conclusion then will be personally and professionally destroyed. When the real-world data is shown to be flawed, they insist that it doesn't really matter. Most of the science is done in computer simulations, whose consistency with the real-world should never be challenged. Most importantly, all of the predictions made by the Global Warming scientists are wrong. They predicted that the past 3 years would be the worst ever for hurricanes - they turned out to be some of the most mild. The predicted temperature changes couldn't have be much worse.Compare that with any other real branch of science and you'll see why any reasonable person would be skeptical. I read an interesting thesis challenging the basis of the theory of relativity the other day written by a layman, and the responses to it were theories on tests that could be performed that would prove or discredit the theory. Science should be challenged - always. Even wild and ridiculous theories are tested and proven or disproved. Tests MUST be reproducible and available to all. That is the very nature of "The Scientific Method".What the global warming community does is akin to a bad religion. It has its high priests who must never be challenged. They create prophecies which turn out to be false, but then their defenders just pretend that they were true. Anyone who challenges the religion are attacked.I don't like bullies - especially ones who dress up and play scientists.

For the climate scientist it is a matter of science. For all others it is a matter of belief (in what the climate scientists tell you is happening). Whether or not you decide to believe the consensus of the experts (climate scientists) is up to you . . . some do, and some don't.

A First World country wherein thousands of people die simply because it was hot outside? What's wrong with this picture?

Perhaps you should ask the people in the Chicago? The difference is that a lot of Europe rarely (or at least it used to be rarely) gets hot enough to require air conditioning in contrast to parts of the US that trace their population growth to the invention of air conditioning due to the stifling heat (at least that's what Atlanta claimed in some of it tourist literature several years ago).

I would hazard a guess the the main reason for this is that the US is at a lower latitude that much of Europe and lacks the moderating influence of the ocean (no Mediterranean, Rockies block air from Pacific), but I am by no means an expert in such matters. Whatever the cause the US does seem to be, on average, hotter than much of Europe in the summer and colder in the winter. Europe does get hot but not for the prolonged months that the US seems to suffer. This means that not only is air conditioning a lot less common but heat waves occur far less frequently and are typically less severe so, when bad ones do happen, there are far more vulnerable people around because their population has not been reduced by frequent heat waves and there is little/no air conditioning available to help.....of course this does not explain the deaths in Chicago but I'll let you figure out why they happened.